Juliet Marillier - Cybele's Secret

one track in and out.”

“Then why are you suggesting we go on in the morning?” asked Stoyan, frowning. “What is the point of that if you believe this track will not take us to our destination?”

“Wait a bit.” I was thinking hard as I held my hands up to the fire, trying to get some feeling back into my fingers. “Perhaps Mustafa wouldn’t have told you. Perhaps this path is secret, a way that would only reveal itself to the person who brought back Cybele’s Gift.” As soon as I said this, I felt instinctively that it was true. “You saw that tree down at the bottom,” I added. “Gifts for a deity of some kind, a nature god or goddess—that’s the kind of place where folk leave them, an old tree by a spring. A spot where earth meets water. Cybele’s path.”

“That is more leap of imagination than logical deduction,” Duarte said, but he was gazing into the fire as if giving the idea serious consideration.

“No, Duarte,” I said. “It’s a mixture of scholarship and intuition. And experience, but I am not going to discuss that part of it with you, since you more or less called me a liar last time I mentioned it. I know about this kind of thing. This is the right path. We just have to keep going up and following the signs.”

“Signs?”

“Trust me,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Now, are we going to try cooking, or is supper to be strips of dried meat eaten cold?”

I’d been worrying about our sleeping arrangements. It was one thing to have Stoyan lying on guard across the outer doorway at the han, or in the next-door cabin on the Esperanca listening for intruders. It was quite another for me, at seventeen, to have to share a small cave with three adult men and to be obliged to lie close to at least one of them to keep even tolerably warm. Now that it was time to bed down for the night, I found myself suddenly bereft of all social confidence. I stood shivering by the fire, wishing I was back home again.

“Here.” Pero spoke in halting Greek from within the cave, where he had been quietly laying out bedding. “Senhora Paula, Stoyan, Pero, Duarte. Senhora near fire. Good for sleep. Yes?”

“Thank you, Pero,” I said. “That arrangement sounds extremely sensible.”

Pero grinned at me, showing several gaps in his teeth. “I am father of seven children, senhora. Seven children, two beds. Is the same, yes?”

“Not quite,” observed Duarte. “Still, it would take a man with more fortitude than mine to consider getting up to any tricks when it’s as cold as this. Sweet dreams, my friends.”

Before he rolled himself into his blanket next to Pero, he set Cybele’s Gift in the cave, safely to one side where nobody could harm it with a sudden movement. Within its shroud of wrappings, it cast an odd shadow on the cave wall, round and bulging. Make me whole. Tomorrow, perhaps we would do just that.

Even with the fire in front of me and the solid form of Stoyan at my back, I was almost too cold to sleep. I kept dropping off, then waking with a start to the deep silence of the nighttime forest, punctuated by the cries of birds and by vague squeakings and rustlings. The first time I did this, Stoyan adjusted his blanket so it was over the two of us. The second time he murmured something that sounded like poetry as I gradually fell asleep again. The tone was soothing, though I could not understand the language. The third time I woke, trembling with cold, his arm came around me, moving me closer against him, and the chill began to retreat from my body. “Thank you,” I whispered. I felt his breath warm against my hair, but now he said nothing at all.

I awoke in the morning groggy with tiredness and sore from lying on the ground, but certainly not cold. As I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I realized that I had four blankets and someone’s cloak over me, with a folded jacket under my head. The cave was empty; all the others were up. The fire had been quenched, and Duarte was busy covering the ashes with soil. Pero was stuffing items into a pack.

“I was about to wake you,” Stoyan said. He was sitting on the rocks near me with a cup in his hands. “Please drink this. You need something in your stomach before we move on.”

I drank. It was a hideous brew of dried meat and stale bread soaked in water; I hoped I would never have to sample it again. Still, it was food and it was warm. They must have only just put out the fire. The sun wasn’t even up yet.

“We’re heading on straightaway,” said Duarte as Pero gathered the blankets, folding and stowing them each in turn. “With luck we’ll reach the mountain village while the sun is high and have shelter tonight. I don’t want you sleeping out in the open again if it can be avoided.”

“I’m an equal member of the expedition, remember?” I said, trying for a smile. “No special privileges, no concessions. Not that I’ll refuse a warmer bed if it’s offered. Excuse me, I need to go off into the forest for a little.”

I was squatting under a tree, making sure none of the men could see me, when a black-robed woman manifested in the shadows nearby: not Tati this time but an old crone, peering at me with her sunken dark eyes, her face as pale and crumpled as worn parchment. She could have been a sister of the ancient juniper down at the water’s edge, a thing of old earth, a survivor of many lifetimes of men. I had never felt more exposed or more vulnerable.

“It’s time,” she said, and once again I did not know what language she spoke, only that I understood it from instinct. “Sharpen your wits. You will have sore need of them before this day is out. Tighten your courage. And watch your balance.”

I nodded, wondering if I could ask questions or whether she might vanish if I spoke.

“Remember,” she said. “Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all. And learn. Learn wisdom. Go safely, Paula.” And she was gone, not fading away, not stumping off into the forest, not disappearing in a flash and a bang, just…gone.

I didn’t say anything when I got back to the outcrop, though Duarte observed that I was looking paler than usual and whistled the first line of Paula, de brancura singela in a thoughtful sort of way. The men already had their packs on their backs, and we set off up the mountain as the sun appeared above the horizon, veiled by clouds. The first part was steep. We scaled the side of the outcrop to pause on a level patch and gaze out at the view Stoyan and I had missed yesterday: a broad vista over the Black Sea, with headlands to both sides. The mist was rapidly clearing from the tree-clad slopes below us. We could see the Esperanca at anchor in the next inlet, her sails furled, and several little islands not far from shore. There was a coastal settlement in the distance, a long way farther to the east. And moored in the cove from which we had begun our assault on the mountain, small as a toy on the sheltered water, there floated a stately three-master with sails of an unmistakable russet red.